Friday, 14 October 2011

Vegan pastry and tofu pies experiments

Blame the Grand Final for all the pastry in my kitchen recently. When I decided to make vegan party pies, I had to practice making pastry. It is not my strong point. I remembered the tofu pies from the uni food co-op that I loved. I decided to experiment with some tofu filling.

I mixed the vegies. Beautiful colours! Can you spot some of my stripey beetroot? I added tofu and lots of seasoning. I wanted the colours to shine through. They faded.

The mixture reminded me of chicken. In looks, not tastes. It was ok. The seasoning wasn't quite right. Maybe a bit less tomato paste and a bit more soy sauce was needed. I have since sampled the food co-op pies again and found they have tofu, tempeh, broccoli and carrot and far less seasoning. More experiments ahead! I have given a rough guide to what I did below to give me ideas for next time.

The crusty hot water pastry worked well. It has never let me down. Not even when I used vegan margarine instead of butter. Wonder how it would work with gf flour? I used my muffin cups for making the pies. I found a flour tub lid and a glass to cut out the bottoms and tops of the pies.

When I make pies, like dumplings, I always have leftover filling. My solution is to serve it with some rice on the side with the pie. This is what you see above. It is a good way to minimise the pastry in the meal. The pies were a good size for dinner. Too big for party pies. You can see below that I had to mark the one with P where I experimented with the party pie filling.

My proudest moment was using up the leftover scraps of pastry. My mum used to make jam tarts with her leftover pastry. So that is what I did! I just spooned a bit of pastry into the last couple of muffin cups and baked them with the filled pies. The tofu filling was work in progress. The jam tarts were a hit!

Fry the vegies in the oil (I add more as I chop the vegies) until nicely wilted. Add tofu and remaining ingredients. Cook until the flavours come together. I didn't note times but these are far easier to work out than flavours.

I did note that I cooked the mixture in a batch of crusty hot water pastry with some soy milk to baste them. I baked them at 200 C for 10 minutes and 180 C for 30 minutes. Or you could just serve with rice, a la tofu scramble.

12 comments:

The tofu pies look fantastic! So impressive that you make your own pastry, I always opt for puff pastry wherever possible. My mum also used to make jam tarts with leftover pastry and I used to adore them so much. :D

Thanks Mel - I highly recommend this pastry - I hate making pastry but this is so easy to make and easy to roll out too - puff pastry just doesn't seem right for every pie but I use it quite a bit too.

Thanks Hannah - regretfully the chances are slim! I make sweet pies even less than savoury pies and peanut butter is out due to sylvia's allergy

Thanks Shaheen - I am surprised you haven't as I just love admiring your pies and there are so many great ideas on your blog!

Thanks Jeni - home made jam tarts are great

Thanks Astra - try this pastry for an easy alternative - so much easier than the usual shortcrust - though maybe if I had a family pastry recipe like yours I might feel loyal to it

Thanks Choclette - I am not a big pastry fan - E loves them but I have greater foodie loves (nut roasts, bread, cakes, choc chip cookies) but I love this pastry as an easy way for me to make pies occasionally

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Recipes and reflections in which our vegetarian heroine dreams of being tall and graceful as a giraffe; being a goddess in the kitchen; and being gladdened by green gadgets, green food and green politics because green is the colour of hope. See About Me for more info.